For Jade Tableau, Wellington-based artist Erica van Zon continues a yearlong project of working with the colour green, engaging two sites at Te Uru: the external Window Space and the Small Space located inside. Having printed images of Te Uru’s distinctive aluminium cladding onto silk, van Zon converts the Window Space into a surreal continuation of the building, as well as a backdrop for a new configuration of small and whimsical clay objects. Inside the gallery, van Zon offers a range of media from beading and embroidery to steel work and printed silk, whose forms and arrangement adhere to the visual structure of the grid.
Van Zon finds prompts for creativity throughout her immediate surroundings. Here, the shimmering surface of water, the trellis at a fruit shop or the cladding of the building are all of interest to the artist. The correlation of these examinations to the grid recognises spatial relationships, where the mapping of one point to another leads to the formation of organisation and the endless possibilities for patterning.
Erica van Zon lives and works in Wellington. She holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. Recent solo exhibitions include Dogwood Days at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2014-15, Coffee Perhaps at the Dowse Art Museum, 2016-17 and Opal Moon, Local Lime at the Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui and Objectspace, Auckland 2017-18. She was the 2011 recipient of the AsiaNZ/Wellington City Council WARE Residency, Beijing 2011, and was a visiting artist at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2014.
Image: Erica van Zon, Earthworms on Cladding, 2018